Rear Window | Flexible response

Severo Portela

Jason Chao is no longer the VP of the pan-democrat umbrella organization NMA! Moreover, he is resigning as a member of the New Macau Association… but he is not moving out to split the political ranks, which might otherwise be seen as a way to maximize the electoral chances (all) contestants have in the directly elected elections – according to the allocation under this peculiar electoral system otherwise known as hybrid D’Hondt.  Not at all… Jason Chao is leaving home to launch a new civil platform solely dedicated to monitoring election fairness.

Once again, Jason Chao who undisputedly took the MSAR’s serene ‘und’ conformist pro-democracy to another level of civil consciousness and political debate is showing us the way to address the political landscape of a non-developing system and challenge an increasingly disenfranchised citizenship.

The new platform feeds on the belief that if the system does not develop under its own provisions it is no use to challenge the big questions; but the changes introduced in the framework of the Legislative Law are fair game and require watching closely. For example, why lose time and good temper to challenge the argument that the population is not sufficiently developed for universal suffrage when the whole of Macau more than qualifies in terms of GDP, education, culture, and when the one and only factor likely to disqualify the local population is the repetitive mantra that residents only worry about flats and buses?! We should rather lose time and composure to monitor election fairness according to the very new rules adopted by the electoral commission – an unbelievable source of potential controversy, unfairness and interference. Shall we not anticipate trouble?

Wisely, Jason Chao is compromising himself, clear and adamant that the profile of his electoral observation is soon to be openly disclosed and not be in any way related to Benny Tai´s Occupy Central electoral platform for guidance or roadmap. He vows to take to the public information gathered all along the process as it is supposed to run (till the end of the elections), even including the information related to candidates who refuse to be monitored. There are a few strong human rights groups in Hong Kong to provide exactly the same public services Chao will be offering to Macau residents, regardless of whether equivalent official or semi-official channels will also be present.

So that’s official… Jason Chao is quitting NMA to avoid being a liability to Scott, Sulu and others. He is not banging the door shut, rather he is saying goodbye with the utmost irony. He is confessing himself also unfit to run for legislator of a lethargic civil society (when compared to Hong Kong) because he was diagnosed with the Asperger Syndrome – a mild autism spectrum disorder.

This is when and where irony and mythology find each other. In short, Jason led the Argonauts in the quest for the Golden Fleece… he had to complete three tasks: to plow a field using fire-breathing oxen; to sow dragons’ teeth causing an army of stone warriors to appear (Medea told him to throw a rock into the army, and the soldiers not knowing who had thrown the rock killed each other); the third task was to take the Golden Fleece from a sleepless dragon (a sleeping potion was enough).

As a final and worrying note, Regina Ip was “squeezed out” of the CE race and she later complained that the selection process was “too restrictive”. So meet Carrie Lam as the front runner, John Tsang as number two and ex-judge Woo Kwok-hung as a pan-democrat or inspired by the old liberal. It is concerning that after Long-Established Tycoons, Civil Servants, Catholics, Academics, and Youth Activists, the law profession would be selected as surrogate for pan-democrats.